RIA Checkpoint

RIA Checkpoint offers primary tax documents and secondary analysis for federal, state, and local taxation, estate planning, pensions, international taxation, and more. RIA and Warren, Gorham & Lamont (WG&L), two top names in primary and analytical research publishing, anchor this database.

RIA Checkpoint is organized by tabs: Research, Newsstand, and Tools. Within the Research section, the user may search RIA analytical and editorial material, legislation (including archives), primary tax resources (codes, regulations, etc.), and news/current awareness (including WG&L publications). From the Newsstand tab, the user may access the latest editions of daily tax updates, such as RIA Federal taxes Weekly, Cummings' Corporate Tax Insights, and State & Local Tax Weekly. The Tools tab offers the user calculators from various categories, including mortgages, taxes, and retirement savings.

To begin a search, select the Research tab. The categories included within RIA's well-known Editorial Materials are Citator, Coordinator, and Handbook, as well as annotations and explanations which accompany the United States Tax Reporter. Tables and rates and form/line finders are also available.

Primary source material includes the Internal Revenue Code, Treasury Regulations, Congressional Committee Reports, Current Pending/Enacted Legislation, Federal Tax Cases, IRS Practice materials (RIA's), IRS Publications, IRS Rulings and Releases (starting in the 1950s), U.S. Tax Treaties in Force.
Legislative materials include annual analysis of major tax acts starting in 1996 through the current year. Committee Reports, enact legislation, General Explanation of Tax legislation Enacted (Blue Books), pending legislation, and Table of Code Sections Amended are provided beginning with the 104th through the current Congress.

News/Current Awareness includes daily news plus the searchable text of WG&L's Journal of Corporate Taxation, Journal of Taxation, and Practical Tax Strategies/Taxation for Accountants.
Research Hint: RIA Checkpoint allows searching by citation. (The default search is keyword).
-Choose the Research tab.
-From the left column, select the appropriate source type. For example, Code & Regs, Cases, or Rulings/IRB.
-Appropriate boxes with sample citation formats open for the user to input.

[FIND RIA Checkpoint in our "Databases by Subject" List on the first column of the "Business and Management" page.]

Notable E-Book: Market Share Reporter

Market share, the proportion of total sales of a product accounted for by an individual brand, is one of those benchmarks business folk like to look at to get a sense of how one company stacks up against their competition. Actual data is often embedded in reports and articles, and so it is not always that easy to come up with. One excellent source, since 1991, has been Gale's Market Share Reporter (MSR), an annual printed compendium that Sawyer Library has had since its earliest days.

Just recently, we moved this from a print subscription to an e-book standing order, to allow students and faculty to make use of the resource 24/7, from wherever they happen to be. Available on Gale's "Directory Library" platform, we have profiled the MSR so that you can search that alone.

The default option is to search only the latest volume. But if you want to search several years at once, simply control-click several years in the Editions box in the lower middle of the page. (I have selected both the 2009 and 2010 editions in the screenshot above.)

Once you have selected the years you wish to search, just put search terms into the yellow Quick Search box to the left. Do multiple brands (for example, ford and general motors), a type of product (for example, soft drinks), or whatever else seems appropriate. Note that once you click on a results item, you will see not only a table or chart with information, but also active links below that allow you to explore the SIC or NAICS [government industry] code that might get you more useful hits--ones that don't come up with a keyword search.

Our online file goes back to 2000, so any figures of recent vintage should be available online. We also have older volumes in the Reference stacks, should you be interested in consulting them for older figures. And if you'd like a publisher description of MSR, you can find one here.

MSR is a very valuable resource, but since it is only produced once a year, the data will not be the VERY latest. So keep in mind that there are other ways to get market share information. These include going to a major database like Business Source Complete and searching for your company or brand and market share (for example, nike and market share). The TableBase module in RDS Business Suite is also a good source of market share data in a relatively clean form. The unwieldy database from Euromonitor called Global Market Information Database (GMID) is also chock full of useful data....once you find it.

When you are searching for market share information, explore all of your options, including the now-available online version of Market Share Reporter.